Exoplanet found around Alpha Centauri B

[maro]

A team of the university of Geneva discovered a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B - our neigbour solar system.

Its "only" 4 lightyears distance - "around the corner" compared to usual space distances....

The earth size body revolves Alpha Centauri B every three day(!) and is therefore much to close for habitating life.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/alpha_centauri_b_planet_found_in_nearest_star_system_to_earth-100289

the fastest human made object by now was the helios 2 space probe - 70km/s

one would need something like 30.000 km/s to reach the Alpha Centauri B system within about 45 years....sounds strange ?

what do you think - could that be the target that inspires "the next step" that enables speeds like this ?

[SpaceSphere]

Haha, for a second there I thought you meant 'thirty point zero-zero-zero' km/s, and then I remembered that the meanings of "." and "," in numbers are sometimes switched around (this almost lead to a disaster once when I misread the output current of a power brick ). Anyway I'm super excited about this discovery as well, it made me completely forget about the presidential debate! It would be awesome to have a probe visit that system, my money is on antimatter engines fueled by antimatter harvested from the Earth's Van-Allen belts (making antimatter in particle accelerators is to slow and expensive). Perhaps the speed of the craft could be augmented by attaching a solar sail and sending it on a sun-dive to provide an extra kick to start its voyage, and we could build a big station in space or on the moon that could focus a powerful laser beam on the sail to accelerate it further. In that case maybe most of the antimatter could be used to decelerate on approach to Alpha Centauri B. Also, although it will be tremendously expensive, we should probably send several, just incase one bumps into a grain of dust while traveling at relativistic speeds or something.

[NovaSilisko]

Already have a thread on this, actually: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/24236-Earth-sized-planet-found-orbiting-Alpha-Centauri-B